Trump Claims India Has Agreed to Cut Duties After ‘Someone Finally Exposed Them,’ Days After Announcing Reciprocal Tariffs- wna24

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that India has agreed to lower tariffs on American imports, following his reciprocal tariffs announcement.

Trump claimed the decision came after “finally someone exposed” India for “what they have done.”

The 78-year-old president stated that the tariffs on American businesses in India are very high and restrictive.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said, “India charges us massive tariffs—massive! You can’t even sell anything in India. It’s almost… it is restrictive. You know, we do very little business there. They have agreed, by the way. They want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody’s finally exposing them for what they have done.”

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The US President’s comments came after India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal arrived in Washington for trade talks with his US counterpart, Howard Lutnick.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on Saturday that India and the US are planning to negotiate a landmark Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) that could potentially boost trade between the two countries, amid US President Donald Trump’s plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on US trading partners, including India.

In a weekly briefing, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that the agreement aims to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade in goods and services, increase market access, and reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers.

“The two governments are in the process of advancing discussions on a multi-sector Bilateral Trade Agreement. Through the BTA, our objective is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade in goods and services, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries,” said Jaiswal.

Earlier, Trump announced tariffs on the South Asian trade partner, set to take effect from April 2, for “having trade policies that are unfair to Americans.”

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In his address to a joint session of the US Congress , Trump said India has charged the US tariffs higher than 100 percent. He also accused China of charging an average tariff on American products that is twice what the US charges them, and South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher.

He expressed that the system is not fair to the US and never has been.

“Whatever they tax us, we will tax them,” the president vowed.

He also mentioned that he did not want to make the announcement on April 1, as it is April Fool’s Day.

On February 13, PM Modi and US President Trump met for bilateral talks and agreed to negotiate a mega trade deal by the end of this year. They set an ambitious target of USD 500 billion in annual trade by 2030 to narrow the trade deficit.